


Other Alleys

by FabulaRasa



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-10
Updated: 2010-02-10
Packaged: 2017-10-07 04:03:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/61248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FabulaRasa/pseuds/FabulaRasa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I wrote this story down purely for my own ‎enjoyment. It's a sequel, of sorts, to <i>Rats' Alley</i>, and was in my head immediately after I wrote that story, but I didn't append it because a) it's pointless, ‎b) it adds nothing to the story, and c) it has no redeeming literary ‎merit. But I did end up writing it down, those ‎considerations aside. In my head, I stayed with the two ‎characters as the specific universe of <i>Rats' Alley</i> revealed them. I ‎liked the story and the characters so much I couldn't quite let it ‎or them go, in my imagination. I took them places. I dressed ‎them up. I played with them. And this is the result.‎</p>
            </blockquote>





	Other Alleys

Astonishing, the noises you could get used to. After a while, you stop hearing the noises you're around every day, all the hum-drum thrumming intrusions of life, no matter how loud. The brain sorts and sifts and tosses aside, whether waking or sleeping – this noise, irrelevant; that noise, significant. Quiet becomes defined not by the absence of noise, but by the absence of meaningful noise. It is how we manage to live by train tracks, or airports, or in New York City.

When he was little, he had thought nothing of the constant ill-tempered mutter of his family's house elves, of the raised voices and periodic banging noises from his parents' bedroom, of the distant carp and shriek of the portraits in the long gallery overhead, of the secretive whisper of the walls as he brushed past. For a big house inhabited by four taciturn individuals, Grimmauld Place had been surprisingly full of noise. It was the same with New York City. The roar of the bus on the street, the clang of the radiator, the ululation of a car alarm, the shouts on the sidewalk below, feet on the stairwell by his head, upstairs' dog baying at the door– none of it was sufficient to pull him from sleep, these days.

Which was why the banging, though not in itself loud, did wake him. It was a different noise from the ones his sleeping brain was accustomed to hearing and tossing aside. Wake up, you lazy sod, (said his brain), and kill whoever it is making all the racket right fucking now.

He more or less fell out of the bed and pushed a hand through his hair, just enough to get it out of his eyes. Enough to see Snape, standing at the door of the hall closet, suitcases scattered around him, coats in disordered heaps, and a determined look in his eye that made Sirius want to crawl back into bed and pull the covers up over his head and sleep far into next week.

"Did I wake you?"

"Severus. What the hell are you doing?"

"You needed to get up anyway. It's quarter till eleven, and we have work to do. There's not a moment to lose."

Sirius hoisted himself up off the floor, yawning and stumbling his way into the kitchen. He gave the coffeemaker a flick, grateful that he had thought to replace the grounds last night. Hard to tell, when it was going to be one of those days, but early on in his life with Snape he had learned that coffee should be readily and frequently available. "You've been to the bookshop again, haven't you."

"Yes, and this time it's gravely urgent, I'm afraid. Are you awake enough to think clearly?"

Sirius lowered his head to the counter and tried to remember if he had replaced the bottle of ibuprofen, or not. The hiss and sizzle of the coffeemaker beside his ear was comforting. "Yes. God. I'm awake. But let's review what we've learned, shall we, about the differing sleep requirements of humans, say, on the one hand, and vampires, say, on the other. So, for instance, a human who was kept awake until four in the morning by a randy and, may I add, loquacious vampire, is going to want to sleep a bit later than what the hell are you doing now?"

"Packing your things."

Snape had made a clean sweep of the bathroom shelves into the smallest suitcase, and was off to the bedroom. Sirius followed, incredulous.

"Severus. For the love of God – what the hell is going on? Why are you – let _go_ of that."

"It's a hideous shirt. You won't need it."

"Goddamn it, if you don't tell me right now what has set you off this time, I will—"

"There." Snape gestured at the kitchen table, and the paperback book resting atop it. He stopped his frenetic activity and met Sirius's eyes. "They've found us. Or it's only a matter of time. Either way, we have to get out of here." He returned to emptying the sock and underwear drawer.

Sirius picked up the book and turned it over. He tapped its cover. He contemplated the coffeemaker. He chewed his lip. _Whatever happens_, he thought, _I must not laugh_. Laughing would be fatal. He took a deep breath.

"Severus. Why don't you take a break for a moment and at least have a cup of coffee. Then we can talk about this a little more."

No answer from the bedroom.

"Just talk about it, is all I'm saying. I'll make some tea if you'd rather." He played his trump. "Please."

Snape poked his head around the door suspiciously. "This is where you try to cajole me into believing everything is all right, isn't it? Did you look at that book? Did you look at it?" He seemed to be aware his voice was edging into unattractive hysteria, and lowered it. "It was the first thing I saw, when I went in there this morning. And I wasn't the only one – oh, not by far. There was a positive crowd of people around it. A crowd, Black. Some of them were actually buying this book."

"Yes," Sirius nodded thoughtfully. "I see."

"The situation could not be worse. This is a disaster. It is what we have always feared. It is a catastrophe."

"Well. From a literary point of view, maybe." Sirius picked up the copy of The Vampire Lestat and studied the spine, cracked in all the places where Snape, he imagined, had thumbed frantically through it on the walk home. He pictured Snape's rising panic, the urgency that had impelled him up the stairs and through the door and straight to the suitcases, and somehow not laughing was much easier.

"There are some wild inaccuracies, of course, and it's obviously written by a Muggle for other Muggles," Snape was saying as he stuffed shoes in the bag. "But the general picture is plain enough. Somebody – this woman, certainly – knows vampires are here, living among Muggles. I made a few discreet inquiries of the shopgirl, and apparently this book is one of a series. A series, Black. She offered to sell me the rest, but I got out of there as quickly as I could and came here. And look." Snape seized the book and opened it to the back page. "Look at this picture." He tapped it with a forceful finger. "Just look at how she's dressed. She's obviously been among wizards, at some point, or at the very least acquainted with the wizarding world. She might even be a squib."

"Right. Hmm. Well." Sirius chewed his lip again as he thought. "I need you to come sit down now."

"Are you mad? Haven't you been listening? Are you so thick-headed as to ignore—"

"Severus. Sit down. Now."

Snape reared back and narrowed his eyes. "What did you say, Black?"

"I said—oh, Jesus fucking Christ. I said, Severus, will you please, please, please come sit down? Please? Just let me talk for one minute, will you? And when I've done, if you still want to pack, then go right ahead. We'll leave tomorrow, if you want. Tonight, even. Just, please, for the love of God, sit down."

Snape slid into the chair and crossed his arms. "I can't think what you could possibly have to say that doesn't involve contacting a travel agent."

"Okay. All right. Here we go." Sirius scrubbed at his face. "Snape. Severus. We've talked about Hallowe'en before, right? And the way Muggles celebrate it?"

Snape nodded warily.

"Good. Now, this book." He pulled up a chair opposite Snape's and held up the paperback. "Is fiction. Fiction. As in, made up. As in, no one believes it to be true." He let this sink in for a moment. "Yes, this book series is very popular. There have even been films made of them. Extraordinarily bad ones. But look." He flipped through to the copyright page. "1985, see?" he read. "This book was published twenty years ago, Snape. Twenty years. This is not late-breaking news. There are no vampire-hunting parties with pitchforks going to come battering on our brownstone. No one believes this," he repeated, slowly.

Snape was frowning. "I don't understand. The copyright. . . but it was out in the bookshop, right out front. And it wasn't the only one. There were all sorts of vampire books, a whole table filled with. . . " He trailed off. "Dear God." He looked at Sirius. "Hallowe'en."

There it was. "Yes."

"But. . ." Snape's frown deepened, and he picked up the book. "I don't. . . understand. Some of the things in here. . ."

"Severus. Do you remember telling me once that all folklore about vampires had an element of truth in it, however exaggerated or twisted? Muggles draw on the same fund of folklore. That's all this author's done. That's all. Listen to me. If anything, we're safer because of books like this. You'd have to be certifiable, to believe in vampires now. Do you have any idea what would happen if you stood at the corner of 6th and Greenwich and proclaimed yourself to be a vampire? Nothing. But nothing. Who's going to give a flying rat's arse? I mean, a homosexual vampire wizard? How much more 1987 could you get? Severus." The name, he had found, had a talismanic, soothing quality, to be deployed when nothing else worked. Sometimes simply repeating it over and over would reach him. He knew for a fact that Snape used the same trick on him, and knew as well that it worked when he did.

And now Snape was studying the kitchen table. The frantic urgency that had creased his face was gone, but Sirius didn't much like what was replacing it.

"I'm sorry I woke you," Snape said quietly.

"It's all right."

"No, it isn't." He looked up. "Sirius, I can't do this."

He made himself get up and pour each of them a large cup of coffee before answering. "Yes, you can."

"No. This is – I am – a disaster."

"We're not going back."

"I think it's something we ought to consider. I think perhaps it would be better."

Sip, sip, stir. Anything to keep himself from chucking it against the wall and shouting. "Snape. Don't be an idiot. You know what would happen. You would be imprisoned immediately. You would be executed within the week, I make no doubt. Except they wouldn't even call it execution. You'd be euthanized."

"Possibly. Possibly not. It's possible that. . . that things are improving."

"They're not."

"You don't know that."

Sirius rose and pulled open the silverware drawer, reaching behind the tray to where a small scroll of paper was stuffed. He tossed it on the table. "I know," he said.

"This is an owl."

"Yes."

"You've been getting owls?"

"Well. Not exactly."

"Not exactly? You're receiving owls, after all we've done to remain out of sight? How could you be so stupid, Black? What's next – a little transfiguration in Union Square, perhaps? A confundus charm on Wung Han at the market? Or you could just metamorphose into Padfoot while waiting for the A train, I suppose. Why not—"

"Oh, shut up, for God's sake. They're not owls. They're—they're pigeons, if you must know."

"Pigeons."

"Well, who's likely to notice a stray pigeon or two, in this city? Turns out pigeons have some magic in them, and not just the homing variety, either. Not as much as owls, but enough. Enough to make a reliable means of communication, unnoticed by Muggles and unsuspected by wizards."

"Pigeons."

"Yes, pigeons from Harry. Read them, when you're done glaring at me. Now. I'm going to go have a shower, and you're going to leave me alone for about thirty minutes. You're really starting to piss me off."

 

* * *

 

Dear S.,

I suppose it's ridiculous to keep saying how much I miss you, isn't it? I feel like that's all I ever say. But I do. I know you miss me, too. I don't mean to start up your overactive guilt drive by saying it. It's just the truth.

Anyway, I wouldn't want you here these days. The two of you were smart to leave when you did. It's awful here. Somehow I thought, when V. was finally killed and done with, that everything would be wonderful forever and ever. In some ways now it's worse. All this hatred. First against the werewolves, now the vampires. My private theory is, when everyone finally woke up to all the evil that V. and his friends were capable of, it was like looking into a mirror, you know? Like seeing what our sort could be capable of. I think it frightened people, and they wanted to believe there were reasons for the evil that went beyond, well, human nature. Or maybe I'm wrong, and it's all much simpler than that, and maybe people just couldn't give up hunting for evil, once they'd begun, and they started seeing it everywhere. Who knows.

But I think they all just want someone to blame. They want to believe it was the fault of creatures like werewolves and vampires and goblins – did you know it was goblins too, now? The Ministry has decreed that all goblins must be registered. Of course, that's just the beginning of the end. It'll be the same for them as it was for the others. Even the house elves are starting to be afraid. H. says they'll never go after the house elves, because who would scrub the toilets then? But I'm not so sure. I saw a leaflet just the other day, talking about the unemployed of our kind, and how house elves just took the jobs that should belong to them, and how we had an obligation to care for those less fortunate than ourselves by providing them with these jobs, and so on. It was enough to make me want to stick on a S.P.E.W. button. Must remember to tease H. about those when she gets back from town.

We try not to go into town much – mostly we just stay out here in the country and try to keep away from it all. I hear from R. occasionally, too. He's safe and well, heading a colony of werewolves off somewhere. Of course he doesn't say where, anymore than I use whole names in this message. Stupid, I suppose. We're all so afraid. Somehow, having V. around was easier. At least you knew where the evil was coming from. At least there was something to fight.

Don't come back, whatever you do. They'll kill him on sight. Vampires that resist are executed publicly. They strangle them. Not with their hands, of course, because it would defile them to touch one. I've never been to one, of course, but they post the pictures in the Prophet now. Can you imagine.

God, I miss you. This will all be over one day, I know it. And I don't just mean that in the sense that we're sitting around waiting for it to end – you know what I mean. Things are being done. We'll get our world back the way it was meant to be. I can't name names, but there are lots of us who feel this way, and we're going to put things right, I know it. I just don't know how long it will take, is all.

All my love to you, and my best regards to anyone else you happen to see.

Yours,  
H.

Snape sat quietly, and ran his hands over the parchment, smoothing it, re-reading it. It was dated just last week. Black most likely kept them for a few days and then destroyed them. He sank his head in his hands and thought.

 

* * *

 

"Have you no compunction about using up all the hot water in there? You might have saved me a little, you know."

Sirius chuckled. "None at all, mate. You wake me up, you live with the consequences. God, this feels good."

"Are you wanking in there, or something? I'll not have you dirtying that tub – I just cleaned it yesterday."

Sirius cut the water off and yanked back the shower curtain. "Towel."

"Here." Snape studied him from his perch on the toilet. "I suppose it's no mystery why I have to keep unclogging that drain. Either cut that hair, or next time, you're the one on your hands and knees digging filth out with a kitchen knife. Also, I suspect you use my comb, but naturally I can't prove it."

"You could dye your hair. Then you'd know for certain. I've always thought you'd make a dashing blond."

"Have you." He watched as Sirius shook his head and scrubbed off, and caught his eye in the mirror. "You could have told me."

"I was saving it."

"For what?"

"For the next 'we really ought to go back I'm sure things aren't so bad I can't live like this anymore' talk."

"Ah." He crossed and uncrossed his legs. "Is that what I do."

"Yes, that's what you do. And we're edging up on my second runner-up favourite, the 'you really ought to go back this is no kind of life for you what have I done to you' self-hatred extravaganza." He squinted at his reflection and carefully parted his wet hair with a comb of uncertain provenance. "So."

"So."

"So I'm going to turn all that guilt to a productive use."

Snape snorted. "Which is?"

"Which is, you're coming with me today, instead of to another musty bookshop to torture yourself and frighten innocent passersby. And speaking of, did you really wear that this morning?"

"What's wrong with it?"

"Oh, nothing, nothing. For a character in Bleak House, that is. We've talked about this, you know. If we want to stay out of sight, it's no good your traipsing about the streets of Chelsea looking quite so Dickensian."

"I am wearing trousers. Which is more than I can say for ninety percent of the people I encounter around here, I must say. Did you know, that insufferable twit who lives upstairs was out this morning wearing something – well, I can't even describe it. It was bright orange, and it looked like his smallclothes, only five sizes too small. I had the decency to avert my eyes when I met him on the street. I'm not sure he is quite right in the head."

Sirius tapped his razor on the sink and started on his throat. "Bicycle shorts, you imbecile."

"Besides, you told me the way I dress was perfectly acceptable. That it made me look 'eccentric and distinguished', I believe was the phrase."

"Did I? Huh. Must have just had sex or something. In reality, you look completely stupid."

"Well. There won't be sex again for some time, so no worries there. Oh here, let me. You're going to slice yourself from stem to stern."

Sirius leaned back and let himself be shaved. "You know—"

"Don't talk. Unless you want me to slip. Tilt."

There was only the rasp of razor on skin for a few minutes, and Snape's arm came around to steady him as he leaned back further. Odd, he thought, how they needed something else to be going on – shaving, making toast – to slip into touch like this. Or not odd. Snape dabbed at the fresh jawline with a towel. "What were you going to say?"

"Just that, in the horror movie, this is where the audience are shouting at the hero, no! No! Stop!"

"Oh, do shut up."

"You'll come with me today?"

Snape regarded him in the mirror, and did not remove his hand from his waist. A finger came around and brushed the smooth jaw. "I'll come. What exactly did you have in mind?"

"Basketball. Chess. Lying in the sun. Gelato. Sound all right?"

The other arm came around him, and then there was a sleek dark head resting on his shoulder. "Yes."

They stayed like that for another minute, afraid to break whatever spell held them. "It's all true, you know," Snape murmured at last.

"What's all true?"

"All the things you don't want me to say. About your being here with me, instead of back where you belong."

He didn't reply because there didn't seem to be one he could get out, so he simply turned and put his arms around Snape's waist, and they just stood there, looped together in front of the bathroom sink, studying themselves in the mirror. "Do you know why there are so few fat people in New York?" he came out with after a while. "Because they don't fit in the bathrooms."

Snape smiled. "Really."

"Really. You achieve a certain critical mass, you have to move to New Jersey. It's the law."

 

* * *

 

"What in the name of all the gods is this supposed to do?" Snape picked up the strange cylindrical object and turned it over in his hands, studying it, oblivious to the surreptitious glances of their fellow shoppers. Sirius smiled. This was a game he never tired of.

"Waterproof," Snape was muttering. "Batteries not included."

"Put that down, you idiot. Here, take a look at this." Sirius unscrewed the bottle and shoved it at Snape, who sniffed it warily. He grimaced, and peered at the label.

"Sensual Organic Lubrication. Dear God. Black, do you want someone experienced with potions to tell you what is actually in that, or do you wish to wallow in blissful ignorance?"

"Walllow, every time. What do you think?"

"I think you know what I think. I think you will have a most unattractive rash by morning, if you use that. Why exactly are we in here, Black?"

"Because," he said, recorking the bottle he had never really intended to buy anyway, "sex shops are fun. And you said you would come with me today, which means it's my prerogative to torment you. Come on, Snape. I know for a fact there's one of these places on Sinshoe Alley, so don't affect ignorance."

"Not all of us can be naturals like you, Black. Affecting ignorance is as close as I can get. Saints and angels, what in the world. . ."

"Bondage gear, you git. Pretty much a universal, there. Oh, look, fur-lined, how helpful. Pink, leopard, and polka-dotted." He steered them quickly away from the racks of black leather and silver buckles, knowing what memories it would trigger in Snape, and silently cursing himself for not seeing that one coming. Thinking of Snape in that. . . that thing he had been forced to wear on his face was still enough to churn Sirius's stomach, and he knew what the thought did to Snape, though they never discussed it. "Ah, here we go. Look, it comes with a handy little feather duster. 'Feather dust your lover's body with edible honey powder and treat them to a licking,'" he read.

Snape unscrewed and sniffed. "There is nothing remotely edible in this. Put it away at once." He frowned at something behind the creams and powders, and Black caught his glance and grinned.

"Ah, I do adore it when your curiousity wars with your better instincts. You're dying to ask, aren't you? Go on, ask. Excuse me, miss?" The sullen lesbian behind the counter lifted her head from her magazine and blinked at him. "This gentleman needs some help, I believe, with the. . . was it the vibrating cock rings, darling? Oh, no, it was the enlarging penis sleeve, wasn't it."

"Shut up, you moron," hissed Snape, shouldering roughly past him and out the shop door. Sirius was still chuckling when he emerged some time later, swinging a small black plastic bag and whistling. He found Snape, scowl firmly affixed, waiting for him on the sidewalk, and his smile deepened.

"Well, that was fun, wasn't it? Look, I got you something."

"Don't touch me. Sometimes, Black, I really dislike you."

"Only sometimes? 'M losing my touch, then. Come on, Snape, cheer up. Let's go get that gelato. There's a new place up on Waverly I want to try. Oh, wipe that sulk off your face. If you're good, I'll let you give me a nice rash later on."

"You are a rash."

"Persistent and incurable, that's me." He rested a brief hand on Snape's back as they crossed the street, and he did not miss the reluctant twitch in the corner of Snape's mouth.

 

* * *

 

He might have no idea what was going on, but he never tired of the view, that much was certain.

Snape adjusted his small round sunshades, the ones he had bought especially for bright days like this one. He had found a spot of shade on the bench, but he couldn't help his instinctive flinch at all that sinister sunshine flooding the basketball courts. Yes, it was a fine view indeed. Despite that it was October, New York was suffering from an unseasonable heat wave – or at least, it felt like unseasonable heat to Snape, who refused to venture out of doors in the summer. Enough heat, anyway, for someone who had been playing pick-up basketball for the better part of an hour to need to take his shirt off, and Sirius taking off his shirt was really the whole reason to appreciate the fine sport of basketball, now, wasn't it?

He smiled slightly as he watched the pale lean form writhe and leap around and in between the darker forms. C'mon, white boy, over here. Fuck you say, white boy. Sirius had taken to basketball with an athlete's natural grace, and had become something of a fixture on the 4th street courts. He played with a pent violence, an intentness that was both disturbing and fascinating to watch. The game, in itself, appeared not dissimilar to Quidditch, minus the brooms, of course. The appeal from Black's point of view was obvious.

How did Black do it, he wondered. How did he move so effortlessly between the wizarding world and this, slightly surreal, wholly unaccountable Muggle one? He had often assumed it was the years of living on the run, preceded by many more years of Azkaban. Black was just better at erasing his surroundings, at folding in on himself. Quidditch or basketball, wizard's chess or chess in Washington Square Park, it made no difference to Black.

Which, of course, was an untruth, and he knew it. Their lives were constructed on several lovingly wrought fictions, Black's Ability To Manage Under All Conditions being the chief of them, right next to Snape's Ability To Erase His Habitual Longings. There were things they talked about and things they didn't, things they kept locked in the drawer where their wands rested, side by side. At least once a month, Snape unlocked that drawer in the rickety old wardrobe. He knew for a fact Black did the same. Sometimes, just the touch was enough. Neither of them used the wands, of course; even the most innocuous magic was traceable.

No brewing of potions, they had both decided. To someone who knew what to look for, potion brewing of that order could leave a palpable magical trace, a trace they could not afford. So, no potion. No potion, no ability to survive on non-human blood.

He carefully stubbed out his cigarette on the bench and flicked it aside, letting the well-being flood him. The hunger had settled to a regular, steady thrum in him now, and he could ignore it if he chose. And even if they had thrown caution to the winds and elected to brew potions, consequences be damned, there was the problem of ingredients and where to acquire them. So he was living without the potion he had taken for years, the one he had indeed perfected, and its absence was. . . exhilarating. After much wrangling, cajoling, arguing, and persuading, Black had finally convinced him to drink when he needed it, in limited amounts. They had learned the hard way about sex, though, and he tried to avoid biting during sex. It was difficult to control the amount taken when sex was in the mix. But avoiding that was harder than it might sound, for both of them, and what worried him was that the more they held off, the more pleasurable and intense it became for both of them. Once, long ago, he had almost gone too far, and had found himself on top of a body gone limp and chill, and the terror had been unimaginable, heart-twisting. They both liked to think they were wiser now, but in some dark corner of himself, Snape knew better.

Nor did he share his secret anxiety, that it would not be, would never be, enough. He knew, even if Sirius did not, that it was the kill he craved, in that same dark corner. Appetite begets appetite, he had told Sirius once, and he knew the day was not far distant when he would face a choice: either take the extraordinary risk and resume brewing the potion, or slip off for a dark night in the park, for a night of slaking the hunger that gnawed and nibbled at him but never quite receded.

"He's something, isn't he?"

The voice came from so close behind him he had trouble not jumping. That was the trouble with the city; it was so full of heartbeats that it could be hard to separate them out, to know which one was closing in on you.

"Sorry. Didn't mean to startle you." The girl came around and sat on the other end of the bench, clearly oblivious to his bench-possession signals. "It's so cool to watch, isn't it? They make it look so easy. God. I was terrible at it, in P.E." She turned back to watching the game, and Snape hunched further into his overcoat. He tried not to speak, on the streets. An accent was something people might remember, though Sirius seemed to think that was ridiculous, in New York. It was one of the reasons they had chosen this city, and this corner of it. Too much cacophony and movement for anyone to stick out, really. He frowned and turned away even more.

"God, look at him go." She turned her head and smiled at him. "I've seen you around here before. Do you play, or do you just like to watch?"

A direct question was more difficult to dodge, and it was made more difficult by her cheery demeanor and insistent smile. He opened his mouth to reply, but apparently none was expected, and she continued without a pause. "Me, I just watch. P.E. was a very scarring experience. But I like to come here to read. I think it's all the movement in my peripheral field of vision. My roommate is doing her graduate work in neurobiotics, and she says that movement in the peripheral field, for certain people, is an essential for visual processing. Isn't that fascinating? So all those kids doing their homework with the TV on? Maybe they're just responding to the innate needs of their cerebral cortices. Or something. I'm not totally sure what a cerebral cortex is. To tell the truth, I'm not totally sure what neurobiotics is." She smiled and pulled out her book. "Class in an hour. Gotta get ready to go look smart." And she settled down into a small blue volume, chewing on the ends of her hair and occasionally raising her eyes to watch the game, and, in particular, he noticed, Sirius.

He stole a glance at her book and frowned. "Excuse me," he managed, and rose to abandon the bench.

That might successfully have been the end of it, had not the game, most unluckily, ended at that exact moment, so his rising was seen less as a calculated rebuff than as a response to the game's ending. Amid the laughter and slapping of hands and backs, Sirius was slipping his shirt on and making his way over to the bench, still grinning.

"Well, that felt great. Don't happen to have any water, do you? I really need one of those squirt things, so I can hose myself down like those chaps are doing. Must see about getting one of those." He rested an arm on the chain link, panting. "Hullo," he said, to something at Snape's back.

"I've got some water, right here, if you want some," came the voice from just at Snape's shoulder. "It's a new bottle – I hadn't even opened it. It's yours, if you want it." The girl held out her Dasani with a shy smile.

"Thanks," Sirius said.

"That was a fabulous game. Really terrific. I really enjoyed watching. Have you played your whole life?"

"Ah. . . no." Sirius swigged the water, letting his smile mask his quick assessment of the girl. "Basketball is not such a popular sport, where I grew up."

"Oh. Right. Yeah. Well, duh. I guess not, huh? Probably more rugby and cricket, right? Do you play cricket?"

"Not as such," he said, still smiling.

"Me neither. I saw a game, once, or a match I guess it's called, on TV. My roommate gets all these weird sports channels. Completely bizarre. Anyway, they had this cricket match on, and I tried to watch it once. Like baseball, sort of, except everybody kept running back and forth in the middle. Weird."

"Well. Thanks for the water." He made an odd gesture with the hand that held the water, and Snape frowned. "I think—I'm not—I—" He swayed for a minute. The water bottle slipped to the ground, and his hand clutched the chain link.

"Sirius," Snape began, but it never made it out of his mouth. The water bottle clunked to the pavement, and Sirius followed it. His head made a small thunking noise as it hit.

 

* * *

 

Warmth, and stillness. His limbs were floating in a bath of thick liquid that appeared now pink, now golden. It pressed on his eyelids, weighing them down, and he had no interest in fighting it. If it weren't for the dryness of his mouth, he would be content to lie like this forever. Perhaps if he opened his mouth, some of the liquid could slip inside and warm him. It seemed like a long time since he had been warm.

"Drink."

Something hard and unpleasant was being thrust into his mouth. He closed his lips around it and sucked in cold, and wet, and he was awake with a start. He blinked, his brain quickly arranging event and place and thing, but the answer kept slipping from him. He swallowed, and the straw was taken away.

"What's happened?" he managed.

There was no answer for a moment. Movement at the window. Someone adjusting the window shades. Of a room. Which room? Where? Then Snape was back, and he knew.

"I'm in hospital," he said, surprised at the hoarseness of his voice. "I must be, because you look like hell. When were you admitted? Are you going to make it?"

"You utter idiot. I don't know whether to strangle you with my bare hands or allow myself the pleasure of eviscerating you. How long has this been going on?"

Sirius blinked again, and became aware of more things. The sound of an intercom in the hallway, of a rhythmic pinging noise. The feel of something in his arm. He turned and looked. He followed the IV up to the bag that hooked on the steel frame, the small bag of red liquid that dripped, dripped into his IV. "Ah," he said. "I hope you weren't the donor."

"That sort of ridiculous, irresponsible levity is precisely what I would have expected of you."

"Well, forgive me, Snape, exactly how should I be behaving, in your opinion? What is it you want me to say?"

"I want you to tell me," he began, and stopped. Sirius heard the carefully controlled fury in his voice. "I want you to tell me exactly how long this sort of thing has been happening to you, and precisely how long you have known how dangerously low your blood count was."

He blinked at the opposite wall, at the pale corkscrewed figure nailed there. Bleeding Jesus on a stick. It struck him as funny, given the subject at hand. He must be at St. Vincent's, then. Yes, that would make sense. He pieced it together, slowly. There was the basketball game, he remembered that. Walking over to Snape. Something, someone else. And then blankness. He cut his eyes at the window. Snape had adjusted the blinds because the sun was going down in a yellow blaze, flooding the room. He had been out for some time, then. Of a sudden his anger matched Snape's.

"No you don't. You want it to be my fault, somehow, is what you want. You want me to have kept something from you. You want to know those things so you can blame me." He tried to pull the blanket higher, to shut out the cold, but the IV was in the way. He closed his eyes again, willing himself back into sleep, wondering if he could find the delicious heaviness again. "Fuck off, Snape," he muttered. "It's nobody's fault. Least of all mine."

There was the sound of a chair scraping. "I'll grant you the latter," came the voice from the other side of the room. "But you and I both know the answer to the former."

"Whatever. I'm tired. I want to sleep. Just. . . leave me alone, all right? Think you can manage?"

"Yes."

"Good."

The silence stretched, but from behind his closed eyes he did not hear the noises he was anticipating. He ignored it and tried to sleep anyway. He gave up after half an hour, or five minutes, or two, he couldn't tell.

"You've not leaving. Snape. Why are you still here?" He tried to sit up a little, but the dizziness seized him. "Go home and feed the dog or something."

"We don't have a dog."

"Well, we ought to get one."

"That's one possible solution, yes."

Sirius rolled over, gingerly. "You could solve our problem and New York City's animal control situation, in one fell—ow." He winced. "I feel like I've been scraped off the bottom of someone's shoe."

"You have a mild concussion from your fall. Lie still." Snape was at the bed, arranging the pillow, pulling the blanket to warm him more. He wanted still to be angry, but he couldn't remember why. And now Snape was talking.

"What I said earlier. My anger was not – it was not directed at you. Please understand that. It is important that you understand that. Do you understand that? Sirius? Do you?"

"Why is it," he began, licking the dryness on his lips. "That you can make even an apology sound like a hostile interrogation."

"Drink some more," Snape said, and the voice was drained of fury, and his own again, and the thing Sirius most wanted he was too ashamed to ask for. But oddly enough – or not – he got it anyway, and when the straw was taken away, there was a warm firm hand circling his, and a thumb brushing his knuckles, and another hand stroking his forearm.

"I need to get out of here," he murmured. "We can't stay here. It's too dangerous—too many questions—" His fingers twitched at the IV, but there was an iron grip on his hand at once.

"Don't you dare."

Snape waited until the breathing evened and finally slowed before releasing the hand, smoothing it out on the covers, studying it. He sat for a while more in the darkening room, arms crossed, lost in thought, lost in the private painful calculus he had always known he would one day be required to perform. At last he rose and slipped out, headed to the coffee vending machine he had noted earlier.

"Hey. How's he doing?"

The voice startled him once again, but this time his face held no irritation. "Much better. Conscious, at any rate."

"You going to get some coffee? I'll come with, if you are."

She trailed him down the bright linoleum hallways, hands stuffed in her jacket pocket. He supposed the faint fall chill must have set in with the dusk. He frowned. "Have you been here this whole time?"

"Oh God no. I ditched my class, but I went to the library and got some reading done. Walked my roommate's dog. I swear, I spend more time taking care of that thing than she does. She's a yoga instructor who teaches uptown, so she can never get home in the middle of the day, and I'm always stuck walking the damn thing, unless I want it to pee all over the rug. My rug. Whoever said that a pug is a great dog for an apartment had no clue of the needs of actual people's actual lives. What she needs is, like, a Bernese mountain dog. Something with a bladder the size of a volleyball, that can hold its goddamn pee."

He turned abruptly. "I never thanked you. This afternoon."

She shrugged. "It wasn't anything."

"No. It was everything. I was— would have been—at a loss. Please, allow me to thank you."

"Well, sure then. But I'm telling you – a cell phone and 911. It was no trouble."

"That isn't what I mean. I meant—the rest." He made a vague gesture at his surroundings. "This. Navigating such things is not—my strength."

She smiled. "No kidding. I'm guessing you take your coffee black?" She pushed the buttons and they waited for the tar-like fluid to fill the paper cup. "So. What's going on with him? Is he okay?"

"He will be, I imagine. It was anemia."

"Anemia?"

"Of a rather severe sort." He took the coffee from the little plastic window and resisted the impulse to down it in one swallow. He did not tell her of his hushed conference with the grave-faced doctor, of the three units of blood, of the more that would probably be needed. Tomorrow there would be a consultation with a hematologist to dodge, and already the ER doctor had talked about a scoping procedure that in its sheer barbarism had taken his breath away. How Muggles managed to stay alive at all was beyond him. Curious, though, how in the matter of blood, the mediwizard community was no further along than its Muggle counterpart. Still just one way to transfer it from one body to another, still no real way to produce it. Madam Pomfrey might not need primitive Muggle refrigeration to preserve the blood she stored, but she could no more create it, make more of it than the earnest young emergency doctor could. He shifted uneasily. "At any rate. Thank you."

"You're welcome." She dug in her pockets. "Listen, do you have any change? I don't think I quite have enough for—"

"Of course. Black?"

"Hell no. I take a little bit of coffee in my cream and sugar. Thanks."

"None necessary."

"Well. I gotta go. I have a ton of work to do tonight. But listen, before I go, I need to give you this." She thrust a small crimson card into his hand before he had time to protest. "And Harry says, stay out of trouble and out of sight." She grinned at him. "Out of sight. Yeah. Way not to attract attention, guys." She shook her head and picked up her coffee, still grinning as she walked off down the hall.

Snape watched her go, frozen. Only when she was out of sight did he look down at his hand, and the card in it. It was blank, except for the small black sigil in its centre. He stared at it, incredulous. Blinked, stared again. Impossible. "Potter," he whispered.

He ran his finger over the sigil, feeling the slight tug of its magic. Carefully, he slipped it in his pocket and walked off down the hallway, back to the room. He would keep watch tonight, and in the morning they would figure what they ought to do. Help would be needed, in what Potter planned to do. Help would come.

He left the light off in the now fully darkened room. The dark was welcome to him, of course, and he knew Sirius could see like a cat in the dark anyway. He must remember to nettle Sirius with the feline simile, when he woke. He spent some time positioning the chair just right beside the bed. Not for comfort – the designer of the peach-toned naugahyde monstrosity had seen to it that comfort would be out of the question.

And he didn't require comfort, either; his thoughts would be too busy for that. Thoughts of things important and unimportant, his brain sorting and sifting, weighing and rejecting. He pulled out the card again and rested it on the coverlet. Yes, this was an important thing, certainly. They would have things to discuss, plans to lay. Harry meant to launch his rebellion—well and good. The fate of the wizarding world, that was important all right. Who should know that better than he, who had sacrificed so much of his life for that good, who had been willing to sacrifice that life entirely if it could, in the end, have done any good?

"Noble heroics, my arse," Black had shrugged about his wartime spying, not so very long ago. "Convenient way to off yourself, more like." And how he had hated him for that remark, and still did, even as he acknowledged its justice.

"You Nietzschean little prick," Snape murmured into the darkness of the hospital room, trying out one of Black's favored epithets.

So, the fate of the wizarding world. Important. The position of the chair – even more important. Crucial, even. It was important that when Sirius woke, he might see first the face he quite possibly wanted least to see. There would be the answer to many things in those grey eyes before full consciousness flooded them, and Snape wanted to miss none of it. It was the flinch he was searching for, the all-important, instinctive, unconscious flinch. The flinch Sirius would be unable to control when he saw the man who had done this to him, who had violated him in this unspeakable way, who sucked life and health from him. The flinch he had caught in that long-ago dungeon. He steeled himself for it, like a criminal awaiting his just sentencing.

Sometime in the night he must have actually fallen asleep, because the next thing he knew the room was heavy with light, his head was muzzed, and his neck felt like it would snap in two from the cramp. The grey eyes were on him before he was ready for them.

"Hell's bells, Snape. If it were possible, you look even worse," Sirius said, with a twitch in the corner of his lip. The eyes held him steady, and they did not blink.

"No doubt." He was surprised at how hoarse his own voice was, and at how utterly uncloaked it sounded. He was lightheaded from the cramp in his neck, from the sheer relief of looking into those eyes and seeing only Sirius. He had to duck his head before he said something ridiculous; after trying and rejecting several responses, he settled on the right one.

"Go back to sleep, you idiot," Snape said gently.

**Author's Note:**

> A final note: there is a gross violation of reality in this story. ‎There is, as I'm sure you know, no bench at the 4th street courts. ‎So the scene where Snape is sitting on a bench at those courts – ‎well, that part's just the sheerest fabrication.


End file.
